


night in buenos aires

by PrinceDarcy



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Argentina, Canon Bisexual Character, Casual Sex, Cuddling, Dark Will, I'd say "healthy polyamory" but yknow, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Murder Husbands, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Will is kind of a creep but everything is consensual, or canon biromantic character at least?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 23:08:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6828973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDarcy/pseuds/PrinceDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun beat down hot over Buenos Aires by day, and by the time the sun slid below the horizon the streets buzzed with activity, as though people lapped up the residual heat like lizards basking on warm rocks. Often Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter walked the streets together, enjoying the anonymity of the crowd and their ease in each other’s company. Sometimes Lecter would set his eyes on someone and they would circle like sharks, returning home with fresh meat and the scent of blood on their skin.</p><p>Tonight, Will left his wedding ring on the nightstand and went out alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	night in buenos aires

The sun beat down hot over Buenos Aires by day, and by the time the sun slid below the horizon the streets buzzed with activity, as though people lapped up the residual heat like lizards basking on warm rocks. Often Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter walked the streets together, enjoying the anonymity of the crowd and their ease in each other’s company. Sometimes Lecter would set his eyes on someone and they would circle like sharks, returning home with fresh meat and the scent of blood on their skin.

Tonight, Will left his wedding ring on the nightstand and went out alone.

He was good at disappearing on a busy street, fading into the bustle and background noise like part of the scenery. The noise would fade away, too, become nothing but a hum in the back of his skull as he wandered until he could be bothered to stop. Then the people would fade away, if he wanted them to. Or they would be all he would see, and he would watch them. Closely, like a predatory hawk.

He never killed without Hannibal. That part of their life was for them alone, and for them to share. There were other things, though, that Hannibal was not as able to give, and he was happiest when Will was not left wanting.

Will often found Hannibal’s allowances largely inexplicable, but he relished in the control, in Hannibal’s eternal accommodation.

His eyes landed, as if by their own volition, on a chestnut-haired woman in high-waisted shorts on the side of the street opposite him. He stopped to pretend to compose a meaningless text message so that he could watch her without seeming conspicuous, and no one so much as glanced at him as the woman entered a bar a few shops along.

He waited seven and a half minutes before crossing the street to follow her inside.

Busy bars hadn’t been Will’s cup of tea in his previous life, and they weren’t in this one. The music and the chatter set root in his skull in the form of a dull ache within minutes, but he could hardly fault the setting for catering to its more party-oriented customers.

The woman was seated at the bar with a fruity-looking drink Will didn’t know the name of, already mostly depleted. He slid into the seat next to her, smiling when he caught her attention. She was quite pretty up close, eyes big and cornflower blue and freckles generously scattered over her face and arms. There was a dreamcatcher tattooed on her shoulder. She wore a tank top with no bra underneath, and it was an effort to keep his eyes from lingering more than an instant on the swell of her breasts.

“Excuse me,” he said, Spanish coming out awkward and stilted. He was good at learning the words, but it was still unnatural to speak them. “Can I buy you a drink?”

The woman blinked, then said, in English—“Sorry?”

Will gave a sigh of not entirely feigned relief, smiling a little wider as he switched to English. “I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”

“I thought that was what you were asking,” the woman replied, laughing. She had a girlish smile; it made her look younger than Will would guess she was. “You had that look on your face.”

“That obvious?” Will adapted to her confidence, dialed back his own slightly. Factored in a touch of sheepishness and rubbed the back of his neck. “If you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest,” she said. Will ordered a beer for himself, and, with a bit of gesticulating to the bartender, another of the woman’s mixed drink for her. She finished the one she had and took the second quite appreciatively. He watched the line of her throat as she swallowed, but redirected his eyes when she looked back to him. “So, where are you from, stranger?”

“Luke,” he supplied, the false name more natural on his tongue than any Spanish he’d attempted. It was one of many since the house on the bluff. “Minnesota. What about you?”

“I’m from Ontario.”

“Canada?” The woman nodded, and Will gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment that was undoubtedly lost in the noise of the bar. “Have you got a name?”

“Lola.” Lola was a sweet name. Lola seemed like a sweet woman. Sweet and friendly and reasonably well off but not exorbitantly wealthy, visiting Argentina for the sun and the culture and some foreign love affairs while she was still young. Out of a break-up, probably. Long term relationship gone south. Very Eat Pray Love, he figured. The dreamcatcher may be a relic of the pray part of that.

“And what’s Lola from Ontario doing in Buenos Aires?” Will asked, letting the good-natured confidence return to his voice. They had a rhythm going now. Easier to carry the conversation that way.

“I’m only here ‘til the end of the month. I’ve always wanted to travel, but I just never had the chance.” Lola gave a small smile. “Then my fiancé walked out, and I thought, hell, it’s as good a time as any, eh? You?”

Will smiled back, pleased with himself for reading her so quickly. Pleased with her for happening to walk into his line of sight.

“Similar story, similar outcome. I’ve been living here since June—my wife left a little while before then, and it took a while to get my footing again. I thought a fresh start was just what the doctor ordered.”

“No kidding. I can’t imagine staying—I wish I could, though, but it seems like something for someone else. Still, who knows what’ll happen before the end of the month?” Lola laughed again, bumping her shoulder against Will’s. “Maybe I’ll stumble into some suave Argentine dreamboat and he’ll sweep me off my feet.”

Will grinned, a kind of roguish and charming he was sure she’d appreciate.

“If you’re in the mood to dance,” he said, even though he had no interest in dancing, “that might be a good place to start looking.”

“Actually, I was thinking of getting out of here.” Lola finished off the last of her drink, squeezing Will’s arm. “My hotel’s only a block from here. Walk me home?”

Will met her eyes, contentment sitting warm in his chest.

“My pleasure.”

* * *

Will came home at half-past two, Lola left happily asleep and sated in her hotel room. The lights were still on, but there was no reason to attempt to be stealthy, and every reason to be honest about his whereabouts; there was one thing Hannibal, in his experience, considered betrayal, and it was deception.

Hannibal was in bed with an empty teacup on the nightstand and his iPad rested against his knees. The sounds of a movie in a language Will didn’t recognize ceased as he entered the room and began, without ceremony, stripping off his clothes. He likely reeked of sex and Lola’s perfume and the cigarette he’d pilfered from her purse on his way out, and he hadn’t bothered to shower before leaving the hotel, but he felt far more inclined to sleep first and shower later.

Hannibal’s nostrils flared the moment Will entered the room nonetheless, and he gave an amused little incline of his head.

“You must have had quite the evening,” he remarked, smiling with his eyes. “Was she quite pretty?”

“Very.” Will pulled on a pair of pajama pants, forgoing a shirt. They sat low on his hips and bunched around his feet, and he suspected they were Hannibal’s, but what was Hannibal’s was his. “You wouldn’t have liked her.”

“Most likely not,” Hannibal agreed as he made room for Will in bed. “If you see her again, perhaps you should recommend a more refined perfume.”

Will scoffed. “Of course that’s what bothers you.”

“Abigail had woefully similar tastes,” Hannibal said, as though by means of an explanation.

“So did Molly,” Will shot back, almost defensive at Hannibal’s possible accuation, but his voice was not as sharp as it once would have been. Hannibal seemed satisfied with that, turning his eyes back to his tablet. Will tucked himself against his shoulder, looking at the screen.

With a few clicks, Hannibal was on the front page of Tattlecrime.com. The headlining article, “Murder Husbands Spotted in Oregon?!”, featured a blurry photo of a curly-haired man, with unfortunately similar stature to Will, from behind in a supermarket. He took the iPad out of Hannibal’s hand and closed the cover before he could react, setting it down on the nightstand. Hannibal frowned but did not protest.

“I won’t be,” Will said, suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“Seeing her again. The woman I met tonight.” He folded his hands on his chest, staring up at the ceiling. “Her hotel is maybe twenty minutes from here, if you want to pay her a visit.”

“Would you like me to?” Hannibal pushed a few stray curls off Will’s face, his hands ghosting over the slight ridge of the scar across his forehead. “Would it excite you, for me to kill a woman solely for having the gall to touch you?”

Will’s eyes slid over to Hannibal’s face, searching.

“What _excites_ me is seeing you lose your composure,” he said. The corners of Hannibal’s lips quirked up by a fraction of an inch. “You work so hard to maintain it. I like seeing it slip away. I like seeing it slip away by my hand.”

“You imagine a reality in which the thought of you having sex with this woman infuriates me to the point that I simply can’t help but kill her. Perhaps that I even risk my safety to do so.”

Will hummed quietly in assent.

“I know you say it doesn’t bother you—”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Hannibal cut in, trailing his hand down over the far more clear scar over the curve of Will’s cheek. “It doesn’t bother me, because you come home to me. You come home and tell me about the men and women you’ve found pleasure with. We freely discuss our boundaries, and you respect mine without question. You refrain from seeing someone a second time if you feel I wouldn’t approve of them. You even give me your blessing to kill them if it suits my whims to do so, and seem to take little issue with the idea. What reason would there be to feel threatened by them, when the fulfilment you get from them is purely physical?”

“I couldn’t _stand_ knowing anyone else was touching you,” Will murmured, looking up at Hannibal through half-lidded eyes.

“And no one will.” The smile on Hannibal’s face grew more obvious, beyond the miniscule twitch of expression that Will could still recall being completely unable to read. “It’s best for both of us if you’re honest with your desires, Will. The knowledge that I alone cannot provide you with _everything_ you need is a small price to pay to have you happy and at ease, by my side.”

“And if you thought I intended to leave you for someone else?” Will asked, teasing rather than testing. The thought was more humorous than anything else.

“You would watch while I killed them, prepared them, and served them as a feast for us to enjoy together.” Will caught a flash of teeth in Hannibal’s smile, then. “Would you have me any other way?”

“Never in my life,” Will said. He raised himself up on his elbows and met Hannibal halfway for a long, chaste kiss.

“Good night, my dear.”

“Good night, Hannibal.”

Will slid his wedding ring back onto his finger as Hannibal turned off the light. He slept, curled against Hannibal’s side, without thought for cars passing outside or intruders in the night—without thought for anything but the quiet rhythm of Hannibal’s breathing next to him. By night in Buenos Aires, Will slept better than he had in years.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, "happy murder husbands on the run" is not my usual jam with fanfic, but I felt like I had to try a take on it for myself, and this plot bunny wormed its way into my head.
> 
> If you're interested in commissioning me, check my info out here: http://eidetective.tumblr.com/post/143587851117/eidetectives-fic-commissions


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